Epilogue: Delightful Facts and Convenient Fictions; Reconsidering Ann Tizia Leitich’s Austria in the Context of Her American Writings

Summary

ON THE VERY LAST PAGE of her popular cultural history book Wiener Biedermeier, published in 1941, Leitich mentions the First World War as a cultural caesura, as the time when the Viennese became hopelessly alienated from their own glorious past. Although the cultural anecdotes and artifacts that make up her history of nineteenth-century Vienna may not seem particularly ideological in their makeup, Leitich's reference to the First World War also appealed to her Austrian readers who, at the time the book was being published, were sending their sons to fight for the German Third Reich. On the very last page of the book, Leitich underscores the political potential of these anecdotes and artifacts in their present, modern context:

Am Ende hat der Weltkrieg, haben Auto und Film das Wiener Biedermeier nicht ganz untergekriegt. Lebt es nicht in manchen Zeilen mancher Dichter wieder auf? Und spricht nicht aus dem Dichter, wenn er einer ist, die Volksseele? Ja, vielleicht kann das Biedermeier gar nicht wirklich tot sein! Lebt doch in ihm das Herz der Stadt am schönsten, am leuchtendsten, am deutschesten.

[In the end, the Great War, cars, and film did not succeed in keeping the Vienna Biedermeier down. Does it not live on in the lines of some of our poets? And if that poet is truly worth his salt, doesn't the soul of the Volk speak through him? Yes, perhaps Biedermeier cannot be dead at all. In it, the heart of the city lives on, as beautifully, as brightly, and as German as it can be.]

The modern world, then, cannot completely overcome the power of a bygone era, even after earth-shattering conflicts and technological progress. To a reader in 1941, the very last two words of the book—“am deutschesten”—are of grave importance, especially because Leitich is using the superlative term to describe the heart of Vienna. It is the German culture that shines brightest in the heart of Vienna, a culture forged in the past but still thriving despite modernization.

Having launched her new Austrian-focused career in 1939 and having enjoyed great success in the early 1940s throughout German-speaking Europe, Ann Tizia Leitich did not put herself in good company, to put it mildly.